Analyzing the Perceptions of Egyptian Youth about the Arab Spring /

Naturally, they formed perceptions about government, public institutions, and political life through the pre-AS and post-AS periods.14 Several studies underline the role of socio- economic elements and the significance of cultural and ideological factors in defining and formulating the perceptions of individuals about various political and social events and issues. [...] The following binary variables of self-identity perceptions are included in the empirical model: Global when the respondent claims to culturally belong to the global/international community), Arab when the respondent claims to culturally belong to the Arab world, and Islamic when the respondent claims to culturally belong to the Islamic Ummah (i.e., Islamic community). [...] Finally, the ordinal variable Ambitious with four discrete ordinal categories (0, 1, 2, and 3) characterizes the respondents’ aspirations in terms of the importance of being innovative and prosperous in the society, and it could coarsely overlap with the entrepreneurial tendencies of the respondents. [...] They also reveal some improvements in the perceptions of the Egyptian youth in the post-AS period, particularly through the variables Freedom of Speech, Political Participation, and Rule of Law, where 45%, 44%, and 48% of the surveyed individuals reported highly favourable perceptions (i.e., category 3), respectively. [...] The perceptions of the surveyed individuals about the pre-AS and post-AS situations are expected to exhibit correlation and, therefore, the corresponding equations are jointly estimated using the bivariate ordered probit model, which is an extension of the standard bivariate probit model where the dependent categories are more than two.